{"id":925,"date":"2016-05-20T05:57:23","date_gmt":"2016-05-20T05:57:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.dogoodsoft.com\/blog\/?p=925"},"modified":"2024-12-23T07:57:34","modified_gmt":"2024-12-23T07:57:34","slug":"google-engineer-says-hell-push-for-default-end-to-end-encryption-in-allo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.dogoodsoft.com\/blog\/google-engineer-says-hell-push-for-default-end-to-end-encryption-in-allo-925\/","title":{"rendered":"Google engineer says he’ll push for default end-to-end encryption in Allo"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Google<\/a><\/p>\n

After Google\u2019s decision not to provide end-to-end encryption by default in its new chat app, Allo, raised questions about the balance of security and effective artificial intelligence, one of the company\u2019s top security engineers said he\u2019d push for end-to-end encryption to become the default in future versions of Allo.<\/p>\n

Allo debuted with an option to turn on end-to-end encryption, dubbed \u201cincognito mode.\u201d Google obviously takes security seriously, but had to compromise on strong encryption in Allo in order for its AI to work. (Allo messages are encrypted in transit and at rest.)<\/p>\n

Thai Duong, an engineer who co-leads Google\u2019s product security team, wrote in a blog post today that he\u2019d push for end-to-end encryption in Allo \u2014 then quietly deleted two key paragraphs from his post. In the version he originally published, Duong wrote:<\/p>\n

\"Google<\/a><\/p>\n

These two paragraphs have been erased from the version of Duong\u2019s post that is currently live.<\/p>\n

This edit probably doesn\u2019t mean that Duong won\u2019t continue to lobby internally for end-to-end encryption \u2014 his job is to make Google\u2019s products as secure as possible. But Google, like most major companies, is pretty cagey about revealing its plans for future products and likely didn\u2019t want Duong to reveal on his personal blog what\u2019s next for Allo.<\/p>\n

Even without the paragraphs on end-to-end encryption, Duong\u2019s post offers interesting insight into Google\u2019s thinking as it planned to launch Allo. For users who care about the security of their messaging apps, Duong highlights that it\u2019s not encryption that matters most to Allo, but rather the disappearing message feature.<\/p>\n

\u201cMost people focus on end-to-end encryption, but I think the best privacy feature of Allo is disappearing messaging,\u201d Duong wrote. \u201cThis is what users actually need when it comes to privacy. Snapchat is popular because they know exactly what users want.\u201d<\/p>\n

Duong also confirmed the likely reason Google didn\u2019t choose to enable end-to-end encryption in Allo by default: doing so would interfere with some of the cool AI features Allo offers. For users who don\u2019t choose to enable end-to-end encryption, Allo will run AI that offers suggestions, books dinner reservations and buys movie tickets. But the AI won\u2019t work if it can\u2019t scan a user\u2019s messages, and it gets locked out if the user enables end-to-end encryption.<\/p>\n

We reached out to Google to ask if the company asked Duong to edit to his blog post and will update if we hear back. Duong stressed that the post only reflected his personal beliefs, not those of Google \u2014 and we hope his advocacy for a default incognito mode comes to fruition.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After Google\u2019s decision not to provide end-to-end encryption by default in its new chat app, Allo, raised questions about the balance of security and effective artificial intelligence, one of the company\u2019s top security engineers said he\u2019d push for end-to-end encryption to become the default in future versions of Allo. Allo debuted with an option to … Continue reading Google engineer says he’ll push for default end-to-end encryption in Allo<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[356,118,61],"class_list":["post-925","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-allo","tag-end-to-end-encryption","tag-google"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dogoodsoft.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/925","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dogoodsoft.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dogoodsoft.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dogoodsoft.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dogoodsoft.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=925"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.dogoodsoft.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/925\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":928,"href":"https:\/\/www.dogoodsoft.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/925\/revisions\/928"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dogoodsoft.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=925"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dogoodsoft.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=925"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dogoodsoft.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=925"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}